Spacecraft in News 2025:

Space is full of mysteries, and scientists are always sending new spacecraft to explore planets, stars, and beyond! In 2025, many important space missions have made headlines. Some have landed on new planets, while others have discovered exciting things in space.

ISRO achieved a milestone with the successful launch of PSLV-C60, carrying the Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), deploying two spacecraft, SDX01, and SDX02, also referred to as Chaser and Target, respectively.

• NASA launches Europa Clipper Spacecraft: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched the robotic, solar-powered Europa Clipper spacecraft. This mission aims to explore the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa by investigating its icy surface and subsurface ocean.
• NASA Unveils Telescope Prototypes for LISA Mission: NASA has revealed the first prototype of six telescopes that will assist the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission in detecting gravitational waves in space. The LISA mission is a collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
• NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission successfully crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, a moonlet asteroid that orbits the larger asteroid Didymos.
• BepiColombo spacecraft made its closest pass to Mercury, providing the first clear view of Mercury’s south pole.
• NASA is preparing for the launch of a spacecraft to explore Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.
• The Union Cabinet approved the development of the Venus Orbiter Mission (VOM), with ISRO set to develop and launch the spacecraft by 2028.

• China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft has successfully brought samples from the far side of the moon back to Earth, marking the first-ever return of materials from this scarcely seen lunar region.
• Sunita Williams has created history by becoming the first woman to pilot a spacecraft (Boeing Starliner) on its maiden mission.
• Chang’e-6 Mission Launch: Recently, China is set to launch the Chang’e-6 mission, a robotic spacecraft aimed at collecting samples from the moon’s far side.
• Starliner Spacecraft Pilot: Sunita Williams is set to pilot the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station.
• Financial Support for Dhruva Space: Recently, the Technology Development Board (TDB) announced financial support of Rs 14 crore to Dhruva Space for its ‘Space Grade Solar Array Fabrication and Test Facility’ for spacecraft applications.
• NASA launched the “Message in a Bottle” campaign for its Europa Clipper spacecraft.
• Intuitive Mission’s “Odysseus spacecraft” became the first private spacecraft to land on the lunar surface, part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and Artemis campaign.
• China launched the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft carrying a three-member crew to its orbiting Tiangong space station.

• Researchers from the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai, have examined the existence of high-frequency plasma waves in the Martian plasma environment using data from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft.
• Japan has recently become the fifth country in the world to successfully land its SLIM spacecraft (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) on the lunar surface.

• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently launched the ‘Psyche Spacecraft’ to an interplanetary transfer orbit. This marks the agency’s first mission aimed at studying an asteroid that is composed predominantly of metal rather than rock or ice.
• Furthermore, the Lucy spacecraft, also launched by NASA, has revealed that the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is, in fact, a binary pair.
• In another development, NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft is set to take off on Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle. The primary objective of the mission is to study the planet Mars.

Aditya L1

• India’s ambitious space mission, Aditya L1, is ready to embark on an extraordinary journey to study the Sun’s ever-changing behavior and how it affects Earth’s climate.
• The spacecraft, named after the Hindu Sun God, Aditya, is planned to be launched in 2023 and will be placed in a special orbit around a stable point between the Sun and Earth, called the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1 (L1).

Spacecraft ‘SLIM’

• The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), a groundbreaking spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is venturing through space, ready to transform lunar exploration with its exceptional ability to land precisely on the Moon’s surface, opening up new possibilities for future missions to our celestial neighbor.